+1 for me. I changed the majority of my contact photos on my phone to higher resolution photos and they remained that way. However, after wiping my phone clean and setting up my google account, they were all back in the lower resolution.

I would be happy to give up some of my Gmail storage space for the high resolution picture to sync both ways.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. The icons used in Google Contacts used to be a relatively low resolution, more of a thumbnail really. Those are the pictures that the phone pulls from first. There are a couple of ways you can bring higher resolution pictures in for your contacts.

1) Use your own high resolution photo. You can do this by opening a contact in the People app, tapping the menu, selecting Edit, then tapping on the photo icon. You'll be offered a choice to either take a photo right then, or pick a photo you've already got on your phone from the Gallery app.

2) Sync your contacts with Google+. If you and your contacts use Google+, you can launch the Google+ app on Android and set it to sync contacts from the app's settings. If your contact has a high resolution photo for their portrait in Google+ it'll get sync'd to your phone. Note that the initial contact photo sync from Google+ takes a little while to finish.

(Advanced note on #2: I was just playing with this a couple of days ago and noticed that the initial sync with Google+ prioritizes syncing a contact that you happen to be looking at. For example, if you're syncing 200 contacts but go look at your best friend immediately, it'll pull down your friend's photo right then and there before working on the rest of your contacts.)

Since the beginning, we use GMail Contacts to manage our contact list. We have put everything there, name, address, photos, etc.

Then we bought our beloved Android phone and we saw ability to sync the contact list with GMail Contacts, wow that nice! Let's do that.

Contacts were synced, and got all the photos from GMail Contacts which are low resolution ... Hmm, ok, let's replace the photo with high resolution "manually" from the Android phone.

Then what? If we update the contact using GMail Contacts (because it is easier to use PC to manage hundreds of contacts) ... and we synced back to the Android phone. Guess what will happen? Yes, that low resolution photos will replace the high resolution that we put previously!

So, your first suggestion is not good enough. Especially because we must change the photo manually, one-by-one, for all the contacts ... every time we have a new phone ... and we may not use GMail Contacts to manage our contact list...

How does it sound? Not good ... really not good.

2)

Don't get me wrong, I love Google+ and I use it religiously. But, not all my contacts are on Google+, not even 10%. And for sure there are many users like we from the total 200 millions Android users. That simply don't use social network apps that much.

You can say to combine 1) for those who are not using Google+. No! The 1) is a mess that does not work in the first place!

Granted, Google wants to have more users to use Google+ ... But, this is not the right way. Forcing user to sync with Google+ in order to have high resolution contact photos is just a bad idea. This won't work and irritate users.

So, again, your second suggestion is not good enough.

--------------------------

Now, what's the solution then? If you spend some times searching the internet, you should find this issue discussed countless times in many forums since few years back. Why there is no good, simple solution to have "good" contact photos in our Android phone? Why?

The new Android OS, Ice Cream Sandwich added 256x256 pixel resolution for contact photos which is nice. But, it's a shame, for sure, majority for us will hate this low resolution contact photos.

And have it converted to 96x96 for GMail thumbnail only, but not for contact syncing.

What's the problem with this? Storage space? You must be kidding! This is very simple and will put all Android users happy. We will not worry using GMail Contacts to manage our contact list and sync it back to our Android phone!

2. Add an option in GMail Contacts to NOT sync contact photo.

This is just a workaround, not an ideal solution. But, this prevent GMail Contacts replacing the high res photo that we put manually per your 1) suggestion.

So, there you go, but don't tell me "This is not Android issue, but GMail Contacts issue". If that's really the case, then please tell us how to escalate this to the GMail Contacts team?

Another vote for this. Very disappointing that Google hasn't thought through using high resolution photos on ICS. Have bought a shiny new Galaxy, but the user experience on contacts is very poor. Apple wouldn't have this sort of low quality thing going on. Don't rely on Google+ - my parents will NEVER be using it, so you should place your reliance on the ICS UX on it's adoption...

Higher resolution pictures in google.com/contacts is something that the Contacts Team is considering, and I double-checked that they're aware of this feedback from the public -- they are. Thanks everyone!

I really hope this is something that gets sorted out. I know Google wants pull everyone onto Google+ through any means, but for the time being, people just lose out.

I'm not an expert on this, but I expect that the work required to change Contacts to supporting higher resolution pictures cannot be much. I mean, there's a whole team working on it, what do they do all day? There's been minimal changes to Contacts in the whole time I've used it.

I'll throw my hat in the ring too. It's a pain to have to go through and manually add hi-res contact pics on my GNex after syncing my contacts on the phone. Out of my 100+ contacts, 3 are users on Google+, but none of them have pictures.

Paul, thanks for your reply. But really disappointed at what you said - "Higher resolution pictures in google.com/contacts is something that the Contacts Team is considering". It is no longer a matter of consideration. You pull out your high end android phone (with those incredible displays) in public to answer a call and everyone notices the blurry/pixelated image of your wife, its a big embarrassment. It should've been implemented before releasing ICS. I always believed Google prioritize quality before anything else. So if possible please convey this message to "Contacts Team" & tell them to stop considering such obvious matters & just implement them.

Crappy quality in Google mail/contacts is just part of it. On my Galaxy Nexus EVERYTHING looks like crap: Pics from G+, Facebook, local, all are blurry. 256x256 pixels on a 1280x720 screen? Really Google? Aren't you embarassed when you as employees get a call and people see that blurry mess that kinda looks like your friend? Go outand buy a WP7 phone if you need to see how beautiful it can look..

I'm bothered by this on my Galaxy Nexus. I emailed high resolution photos of my contacts to myself to put on the phone so I could replace the grainy upscaled old ones, as suggested by Paul.

They look great and lose no quality on the Starred page of the People app. But, then when going into the contact page, they go blurry. Looks like ICS is saving an optimized version of my photo for the tile on stars, but then enlarges that saved picture for the detailed contact view. This is driving me nuts.

This is a pretty annoying issue. I agree with the general sentiment. Not everybody I know has Google+, so when they call it is frighteningly bad. Not just a little bit bad, awful bad. Like, quick put this away bad. Please, make the Google Contact pictures better.

Also, its crazy that it only pulls high-resolution images if they are a favorite contact. If you are going to use big pictures like that for when people call you, they all need to be in high-res. Or you need to stop using pictures when people call.

This seems like a very simple problem to address. Granted the amount of storage required for the upgrade would probably be huge, but that shouldn't be a problem for Google. I'm pretty sure most people would pay a buck or two for the upgrade. This is a major oversight, and an issue that has persisted for years. Google, please hear the outcry. Galaxy Nexus owners everywhere are ashamed, and further ignorance to the issue is a glaring blemish on your image.

I've got to jump on this bandwagon as well. Got my Nexus over the weekend and love it. Definitely don't love how the caller ID pics are showing up. It was tolerable on my OG Droid screen as the resolution was lower and the image shown took up less of the screen.

However, with ICS, the image is almost full screen and looks terrible.

The left and right hands of Google need to get this sorted out quickly.

So, we're still getting dismissive answers on this subject after nearly 3 years of people requesting a resolution to this issue? Perhaps we should all start asking our favourite tech blogs to write articles on this issue. Maybe then someone at Google will wake up and fix this foolishness.

Sorry, but "sync to Facebook or Google Plus" is not a solution. Nor is "manually set the contact photo for every one of your contacts, just to have Gmail overwrite it next time you edit your contact using the Gmail web client." I don't know about you but I'm not interested in using a photo that I have no control over as a contact photo, and I'm most certainly not interested in having to manually set a contact photo for all 200+ of my contacts each time I change phones or have to do a fresh contact sync.

I've migrated from Palm WebOS (better UI than even ICS, imho) for an even better Google integration, but this is really disappointing.

I don't understand why Google doesn't just store the as-uploaded higher resolution pic in the cloud (just use what's in Picasa Web / Google+, for instance), but display a rescaled low-res version for Gmail & Google Contacts websites. This way, the cloud will just push the highest resolution picture possible to each device/app/service, which would resize it as necessary (resizing is already built-in to every device/service!).

Also, why do friends' profile pictures have to be public (world-viewable, not even just selectively shared) for them to be available as contact pictures? Who else is going to be able to see my friends' contact pictures, aside from me on my devices anyway? I have hundreds of friends' and family's tagged profile pictures that cannot be selected because they're not world-viewable (I expect this from Facebook, not Google...).

As a work-around for these issues, I've just created a Picasa album just for my favorites' profile pics to manually reuse after device wipes or new phones.

I just wanted to add, that I also am terribly frustrated by this. I stand firmly against my iphone friends about the awesome power of android, but this miss-step has gone on far to long for it not to be addressed properly from Google's Android/Gmail team. This is a very important UI portion of having a phone, and to have 8-bit looking contacts on a 720p beautiful screen with no work around is a shame. Fix it!

Just wanted to add my name to the list of dissatisfied contact viewers. I know the end result will probably be me having to reupload all my contact photos, but as long as it's a one time thing, I'm fine with that.

Unbelievable. Switching back to iPhone later today because of this kind of lack of attention to detail. Apple gets it right again. I love ICS and my nexus, but from a usability standpoint, it is inferior still. I so wanted to be an android user, but it's this kind of thing that keeps me on my iPhone. I have tried 3 different android phones so I'm no fanboy, never was, never will. I simply want my contact pictures to look like they are from the 2000s and not 1995.

Apple have always done the simple things well. Google need to listen EVERYONE who has a android phone. Everyone that I have ever spoken to about this has asked me if I know a way to get High Res photos because a blocky image just doesn't look very good on a 4 inch screen. Is it really that difficult? SORT IT OUT!

This IS ridiculous, I currently have a Transformer Prime now running ICS and I've gotta say that for such a beautiful OS and even the People app revision, this lack of cohesive growth is a huge oversight and letdown, it's 2012 and time to make this fix a New Year's resolution. I had/have every intention of upgrading to a Galaxy Nexus later this year when it makes it's way to Sprint, but not if such a simple and ugly detractor remains. I love Google and I love Android, but such little things can really end up being huge problems aesthetically.

This lack of polish is exactly the reason why people only 'like' android phones, but don't 'love' them like people do with iPhones. It seems like a fairly simple and reasonable fix for a problematic UI issue; refusing to implement it just shows a lack of respect for their customers.

Thats the reason why i will not maintain my google apps account. I dont know why that is such a problem for google. It cant be the the storage space, they are saving hundrets of youtube videos in different resolutions. I'm wondering what we have to do to get this problem solved. Do we have to dance naked through their bureaus?

I have been frustrated by this for a couple years too, can't believe Google can't fix such a simple problem!! At least disable two-way sync for the contact photo as suggested by several people, although a bandaid solution it works for now with NO impact on Google, how hard is that. The lack of official response from Google for such an outspoken issue is pathetic.

I just tried experimental CM9 build (with Android 4.0) on my Galaxy SII, and I was shocked by ugly look of new contacts application. Design is just fine, but all my favorite contacts photos are displayed bigger then in previous versions of Android, showing exactly how low resolution these are. Google, it's time to fix this issue!

Just wanted to jump in line and voice my absolute displeasure. I had an Iphone 3g and held on to it until last week because I have been waiting for the Galaxy Nexus and ICS. Was so excited to come over to Android because I had been waiting for about a year and a half. Wow, this looks absolutely terrible. Please fix before I head back to Apple. I don't want to, but you are really forcing my hand. This is a gross oversight.

how difficult can that be, to change the resolution from 96x96px to 512x512px (maybe there will be higher resolutions some day ;)please google, take your best coders and work hard on that issue, otherwise we can go back to our old Nokia phones with 96x96px display resolution...

I had contacted Vic Gundotra on Google+ and asked him about this issue and he agreed and tried to follow up with others from Google, then again this was over a month ago. If you're interested in adding to the post or viewing the post, click the link below:

Wow, Google team... how could you possibly IGNORE such a reasonable request like that... What is the point of buying an Android smarthpohe with EXTRA HIGH RESOLUTION screen if you have the contact picture is shown with SO BAD resolution and quality... is this a joke?... c'mon guys, tons of users are expecting an update on this request... could you at least let us know if there is an ETA for this?

Before flashing ICS I never thought that it could be an issue. However the bloated contact pics just make the user experience on my phone look ridiculous. I hope they fix it soon, because this is a blot on an otherwise perfect picture.

To be honest, 1 month ago i set some high res pics on my galaxy nexus and although I've been updating contacts infromation (even forcing updates to single contacts by modifying some fields) on the phone I keep on having the high res pics

the problem here is that using a 256x256 contact pic in ICS, after a sync with google contacts online, it will look pixelated because the sync would replace on the phone the 256x256 pic (what i call high res) with a 96x96 pic

Great, parhaps Google finally did something, it's about time, we've waited over 2 years..
256x256 still looks like shit on modern cellphones though. It's embarrasing to answer calls with people around. They need to fix this properly, with support for proper resolutions for todays screens. We're talking at least 720x720 here.

I am calling it high res compared to low res cos it's shorter than using 256x256 or 96x96

I agree that 256x256 is still too low but always better than 96x96

anyway, again, the purpose of this thread was to complain about the fact that after a sync 256x256 pics on the phone are converted to 96x96, so we are asking google to upgrade the online contacts pics at least to 96x96

in any case, during the last month my phone is keeping the high res (256x256) pics even after sync

of course if you want real high res pics (720x720) google has to update both online contacts AND ICS

I think this issue has been adressed atlast. I tried adding high resolution photos to few contacts from ICS 4.0.3 phone. After the sync, the contact photos got resized to 256*256 and not 96*96. Photos now look much better. But not any where as clear as we want them to be. Google, why didn't you consider 720*720 format? atleast 480*480 would have been better as most of the android phones out there have 800*480 resolution.

PS: I have tried doing same from 2.1 phone but fail! photos changed to 96*96!!! So I guess its changed only for ICS latest versions.

1) Use a high res photo assigned to a contact on your ICS phone The image is 'adjusted' slightly and stored inside your contact at 256x256 mediocre jpg compression, but it's still 'ok'. This is Googles FIRST mistake (I'll come back to that later)

2) Sync with Google.The image will appear in the cloud at 96x96 resolution thanks to Google's cloud 'solution' (this is Google's second mistake, which I will come back to later)

3) Modify some aspect of the contact (say a phone number) using the Cloud interface (web)You'll notice that your phone is updated with the modified phone number but the image KEEPS it's 256x256 resolution (good!).

4) Wipe your phone, or sync to a new deviceYou'll notice that Google ONLY has a 96x96 image in the cloud, and therefore sends this image to your new / wiped handset and your 256x256 hard work is lost.

Solution:

1) When an image is assigned to a contact in the cloud: a) The cloud KEEPS the original image stored (within acceptable limits, let's say max 100K file) b) When synced, the cloud generates an 'on the fly' (or uses a pre-cached) thumbnail appropriate to the current handset

2) When an image is assigned to a contact in the handset: a) The handset KEEPS the original image stored (within acceptable limits, let's say max 100K file) b) The handset generates an 'on the fly' (or uses a pre-cached) thumbnail appropriate to the current handset c) When first synced, the handset supplies the ORIGINAL image to the cloud

3) When Sync occurs a) IF the handset supplies a high res photo (via marking a contact as 'dirty / requiring sync', then the cloud accepts the high res image and stores it b) The handset then then loses the original image from its store (since the Cloud now has it saved!)

The basic principle here is that the Cloud maintains the 'original' hi res image for reference, but only actually uses a resolution appropriate for the device.Devices (conversely) must keep the 'tie' to the original image until first sync is complete (for that contact), after which, it can drop the tie, because the image has been sent to the Cloud.

This solution becomes resolution independent (up to the max resolution or file size restrictions imposed by Google on the 'original' image).

Now let's do some loose math:

WORST CASE SYNC SCENARIO:1000 contacts * 100K image each = 100M worst case IF all 1000 images where assigned at the handset!The mostly likely case is that contacts are added over a period of time, in which case the 100M would be spread over that period of time.If the contact photos were assigned via the Cloud directly, then no such transfer would ever be necessary.

WORST CASE SYNC AFTER WIPE:1000 contacts * 30K image (remember, the image will be a thumb if pushed from the Cloud) = 30M

Even if 30M were deemed unacceptable, the Cloud is free to adopt a policy of lowering the resolution, or informing the user of the large transfer etc. But the original image is still never lost!

THAT is what Google need to implement.

Now let's turn to why they haven't?

a) Google may have some spaghetti code at their end that is making this a problem to 'fix'. Every time they take a look at it, they realise it's a mess and can't face fixing it.

b) Google may have looked at the possible storage implications if millions of Android users (or just Cloud users) assign a hi-res photo to every contact they have (however unlikely it may seem, they have to cater for that scenario). I struggle to believe Google don't have capacity to do this - but I CAN believe they think the potential cost implication is too high (however 'minimal' we think it is)

c) Whilst handset manufacturers STICK to just using thumbnails for contact images, the problem stays away (buried), but the moment they try to implement full / large screen caller ID etc, the thumbnail problem shows up..... OK so far - blame the manufacturers for misusing thumbnails.

d) in ICS Google themselves have introduced a UI that uses larger contact images derived from the thumbnails.Google themselves have met with the same issue as the rest of the world!

I do hope Google see the futility in their current implementation. If not today, then tomorrow it will surface again. With each new generation of handset and UI, the issue becomes greater, and when a system is flawed, it's usually better to correct the flaw sooner rather than later.

3 years this problem's been around. Do the decent thing Google and actually address it?

If all of the above is still too much trouble for Google, then at least introduce a 'photo url' - that way, they hi res images can be hosted elsewhere and clients can either cache a derived thumb from that URL, or actually retrieve from it each time (if they really wanted to)

Why are we not able to store these photos on our phones and the people app can pull them in original condition? You gave me 32 gigs! I got five gigs of drop box space, Box just had a deal for Android users, cameras, game consoles, I can pull hi-res pics out my whazoo...........but not my GNex People app.......:-(
Booooooooo!

I don't know what ICS is and I don't want to. I use http://google.com/contacts to manage my address book and I think it's just a shame that contact photos look all pixelized on a beautiful Galaxy nexus.

Google... We're living in 2012.Please update the maximum resolution of the contact images, so their also appear high resolution photo's on my iPhone. Thinking of moving all my contacts to icloud because here you can store High resolution contact images.

Yeah, but what happens if we don't want the google+ image of our contact? A lot of people have a random image on google+ which simply liked. I prefer to have my own made photo of his face for my contacts. And I really don't want to have to put every photo of every contact again ONE BY ONE!! it's simply ridiculous!

Not only this, it's an issue with the most used application of the phone, thus the most visible and annoying, the phone itself!

I just started using an Android phone and while the capabilities of Android are amazing, Google has *NO* concept of how to do UI design. This shows up not with pixelated contact pictures but with several aspects of the OS/Apps as well. IOS isn't as powerful as Android, but it *looks* good. Sure, you want to be different than Apple. That's GREAT, but you can be different AND look good at the same time. Phones and tablets are visual devices, it's 2012, not 1998. We have lots of RAM, lots of CPU. We're not using Palm devices from the mid 90's.

Telling people to sync their contacts to Google+ is just a blatant attempt to get more people to use Google+. That's not an option for all of my contacts, especially in a corporate environment. Or if you want to sync contact from Exchange.

It's sad, but a lot of what I see in Android reminds me of what I would expect from beta programs or from people trying to do a proof-of-concept. Get it working, then forget about it. Corporate ADD.

You guys need to stop trying to push ads so much and start focusing on making things look good for a while.

</rant>

also, pet peeve and completely off this topic, why does it take three (3) steps to power off the phone: hold the power button; choose power off; then confirm!

Again thanks Paul for the suggestions but there is another issue with relying on social networking to provide pictures. Many people on social networks set profile pictures that are of something other than the person owning the profile. They also tend to change their profile pictures from time to time.

What I want to appear as a icon when browsing through the contacts and on the screen when a call arrives is a stable picture of the person concerned, preferable of that persons face. The pictures in GMail contacts do a better job of that than importing pictures from social network profiles but current suffer from the resolution problem.

This has been a major issue for years and google has been unresponsive. It is typical of google. Good ideas, terrible execution and follow up. Google is basically like microsoft was for years and arguably still is... Too many resources, lack of focus and creativity, just a mess.

I really believe that the issue will be fixed in Jelly Bean which is supposed to be quite around the corner. I guess this is why we don't receive any news from the dev team. I hope that we will know more in about two weeks time.

In case you haven't noticed: the contact pictures are used not only by Google Contacts as part of Gmail, but also by the Peoples App which has in the past been distributed as a part of Android. So I think it quite likely that a new version of Android will be part of the solution.

If you set a high definition picture in the People App, you contact calling picture will be high definition. The problem is that hd picture will only be showed in that device. Yours others devices will be synced with a shit resolution picture version of that.

Bump for a fix from an exasperated iPhone user. This isn't just an Android problem. It's silly that the resolution is limited so severely in google contacts. It's annoying enough on my actual contacts page even without all the added mobile issues.

They said a fix was coming in january 2012....the nexus is google's FLAGSHIP DEVICE, I guess google doesn't really give a crap if contacts look laughably bad on it. Maybe you could support cardDAV naively as a syncing account so I can just put my contacts on my own server and not deal with this crap.

This is not true. You can add high resolution pictures to your People app and it DOES sync them to your Google account. The high resolution pictures are not shown in Gmail contacts but when you sync them to your phone after reinstall they are still high resolution.

The only problem is that Google syncs the high resolution 720x720 pictures back in lower JPEG quality. It's a noticeable difference but not as big of a deal as 96x96 pictures.

"is something that the Contacts Team is considering"You're kiding? Just considering.We have 4.7" phones, 40" TVs since a while now and they are just thinking about having high res contact picture?

HD is everywhere but Google's contacts remain in low res, it is why people choose the Iphone, they don't do those stupid choices on such important think for a phone: CONTACT. It is fine to go onlline and do a lot of stuff but please don't forget Android is a phone OS.

The People app is more buttery with smoother animations and improved search performance.The People app now retrieves high res photos automatically for Google contacts with public Google+ profiles and displays higher res photos (720x720) on certain devices.High res photos set on Google accounts will be backed up and synced across devices.

So many years are gone by. Since the 1st devices with better reolutions we posted resolution problems. In the contact app the pic looks extremely horrible. 256 pixel is also low, because devices have resolutions between 400 and 720 pix. Especially the Google Nexus....there has to be a new solution, no force to use Google+ - i hate social networking and to put always more data into the web. I use the method, to have a contact picture folder on my card and use these pics. But in the app it would be modern to have a really better resolution, depending on the abilities of modern devices.

Very annoying to have to use bolt on apps to manage this. You can understand that data cost for google would be pretty massive with every gmail account user may have 100+ medium/high res images, but with the new influx of android tablets and mobile full screen call images you'd think it's kind of a key requirement these days. Giving the ability to users to store on Google Drive would be a good push for them on their cloud solution.

On Tuesday, February 28, 2012 7:53:58 PM UTC+1, Paul wrote:> Thanks again for the feedback everyone. We are working on improving this, as Punit Soni mentioned on this Google+ thread:> https://plus.google.com/109941711245243963357/posts/YBMTuysqm3B> > > > In the meantime, please refer to the tips posted by myself and others on this thread for managing you contact photos.

@Paul

Half year later, another version of andorid and the issue is still there. what did you mean when you said 'meantime'?! This issue is very annoying!

There aren't any particularly good reasons for this, Google just outright refuses to do a damn thing about it. For a company that really wants to make waves in the phone and tablet OS market they let all kinds of obvious and fundamental issues persist from update to update. With all the effort they've been putting into unifying their product lines and services you think they could get their Android and Gmail/Contact teams working together to get this fixed in a week.

This is amazing... Could someone from Google team let us know if this PROBLEM is going to be fix or not in the SHORT TERM??Is Google aware that most of the phones running Android as OS have 4-5" screens?Is this really so difficult to fix?

I tried to sync my contacts again with large contact pics, but the result was 96x96 pixels. I found some workaround wich work good. In google play there is "Contact Photo Sync" application. It add "sync contact photos" in google account sync settings. When you press "sync contact photos" it creates in your google picasa, new album with all your hi-res contact pics.

On my Galaxy Nexus with JB, changing contact pictures on phone or online both works.On the phone, open the google contact app, open a contact with newly synced high res picture. The picture is low res at the first time, but becomes high res after a couple of seconds...